Friday, January 2, 2009

Eight Days A Week: Inside The Beatles' Final World Tour

Eight Days A Week: Inside The Beatles' Final World Tour, by photographer Bob Whitaker with Marcus Hearn (Published by Metro Books) , is a photographic record of the Beatles 1966 World Tour; that took them through concerts in Germany, Japan and the Philippines.

Bob Whitaker, an Australian photographer, was hired by Beatles' manager Brian Epstein, to be their official photographer, during their 1964 concert tour of Australia.

The collection of photographs here, are quite stunning to look at, as they capture the Beatles traveling en route, in hotel, backstage and during performance. (Note that Bob Whitaker's previous book, The Unseen Beatles {Published in 1991 by Collins Publications - A division of Harper-Collins}, contained another collection of Beatles photographs, including a few from this one. And in 1986, JAM Publishing in Japan, released a beautiful collection titled, The Beatles In Tokyo, of all of the photographs of the Beatles' stay in Japan in 1966, taken by Bob Whitaker; that included photos of their arrival, hotel stay {including a gorgeous fold-out reproduction of the painting that all four Beatles collaborated on together} and in concert.)

The book, which begins with their concert tour in Germany of Munich, Essen and Hamburg, goes on to their stopover in Anchorage, Alaska (due to a Typhoon warning), before going to Japan and the concerts there, another stopover in Hong Kong ( where the Beatles had previously played in 1964, with Jimmy Nichol on drums substituting for an ailing Ringo) to change planes, and finally the Philippines; which ended the tour with the two largest concerts they ever performed, and a very disturbing turn of events with the Marcos Government.

Eight Days A Week is quite a collection. Colour and black and white photographs, in a sizeable book, beautifully bound in Singapore. The photographs, very easy to look at, and the accompanying text, very easy to read. Well done and highly recommended!